Ukraine: Zelensky hopes for a peace summit in Switzerland in the spring

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His country must not lose the diplomatic initiative, Zelensky said in Kiev at a media conference marking the second anniversary of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

On Friday, Federal Councilor Ignazio Cassis announced at the UN headquarters in New York that Switzerland wants to organize a high-level peace conference by the summer. This conference must be a start and initiate a process. It is important that a broad alliance of states is represented at the conference – not just Europe, the US and Canada, but also states from other parts of the world.

Zelensky said in Kiev: “We will propose a platform on which (Putin) can accept that he lost this war and that it was a big mistake and a tragedy for us and for the democratic world.”

Ukraine cannot afford to lose the war against Russia because that would mean that Ukraine would cease to exist, Zelensky stressed.

But this is precisely the goal of the Russian president. He described the collapse of the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was once a part, as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

Putin denies Ukraine the right to an independent state, also because, according to his argument, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians in Belarus form one East Slavic people. The West, in turn, wants to take over Ukraine by tying it to the EU and NATO and thus damage Russia.

On February 24, 2022, Russia militarily attacked its southern neighbor Ukraine at dawn on Putin’s orders. Contrary to Russian expectations, the capital Kiev could not be captured in a few days, Zelensky and his government could not be liquidated, and most of the country could not be occupied. Instead, Russian troops were expelled from half of the occupied Ukrainian territories.

(SDA)

Source:Blick